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Pave the way

Prior to us buying the motorhome we had been content with the original tarmac drive, and the little bit of adjacent garden, but needing some hard standing to park the new purchase on, we sadly removed the lilac tree and ordered a couple of tons of chippings to cover the garden area with.

It soon became obvious that this idea hadn’t been a good one. With the weight of the motorhome, and the uphill slope of the drive, the wheels just kept spinning on the chippings. So every time we wanted to use the motorhome, a tow rope had to be attached to Dougal disco to pull it off.

Towards the end of 2012, we decided it might be a good idea to have to drive/front garden block paved, so T contacted a few local companies, West Midlands Landscapescame back with the best quote.

We checked some of the work they’d done in the area, and were extremely impressed.

Having a shared drive, we obviously had to consider our neighbour too, but she was only too pleased to go ahead with the work as it was something she’d talked to us about several years ago.

Thursday 9th May was D(rive) Day when work began.

The following photos show how it progressed from a mismatch of tarmac, chippings and slabs into what I’d describe as a superb piece of workmanship.

The motorhome, away for its annual habitation service, leaving the area ready for the workers to begin.

First to arrive was the mini digger, ready to rip out all the old drive. I did wonder if the neighbours thought we’d exchanged the motorhome for this. 😉

Work begins. The lorry had just deposited the pile of base material, and was now removing all the waste rubble.

The end of the first day.

Day two, the base material, flattened with a wacker plate is now down and the sand waits to be spread over the area.

The barricade of bricks waiting to be laid.

The end of day two, the area looks enormous now.

Day three, the sand is down, and the artwork begins.

The end of day three, it’s starting to look good.

The end of day four. Sand had just been brushed into the joints, leaving just a few finishing touches to be done now.

The motorhome was returning the next day, so this hurried photo taken at 7.45pm in fading light, is the only one I managed to take of the whole area minus vehicles.

Apart from a couple of short showers, the sun shone on all four days.

Not something I’d normally wish for, but we could now do with a spot of rain now to wash the surplus sand away.

We are very pleased with the work, and would certainly recommend the company, in fact three neighbours have already enquired about them 🙂

Looks excellent. I’ve never really contemplated a motor home. Not much use in HK anyway. But I did think long ago that I’d like to have something I could sleep in when traveling to remote locations to photograph. Happy travels!

Great that you got a good firm and you were happy with the work. Do you remember the phase when there were some real cowboys around who would come knocking on the door to do people’s drives and made a terrible job of half the street and then cleared off never to be seen again? Maybe it didn’t happen down your way. My mum and dad had their drive tarmaced, they ran out of tarmac at the top of the drive where it joined the road (it went uphill) and it never did get finished!

The cowboys are still around. Mostly Irish tinkers of no fixed abode. It’s the same lot that fly tip all the rubble and unused tarmac down country lanes too. My neighbour (the other side) was well and truly stitched up by a similar group doing guttering and soffit work. Word of mouth counts for a lot and being able to see a finished job too. We’d noticed a driveway local to us, that stood out from the rest, so made a few enquiries, which is how we ended up with West Midlands Landscapes. And so it continues with the enquiries we’ve had about ours.

Thank you. Yes we are very pleased with the work done.
I’ve been trying to record changes around me.
Looking back over the years there have been so many things in life I wish I’d recorded, which have now just become a distant memory.

I did a block paved patio (myself) in a previous house and it was a lot of effort to do especially as I chose a herringbone pattern like yours and cutting the edge blocks took forever even with a cutting disc and I don’t think the neighbours were impressed with the clouds of rest dust that flew off them! oops 🙂

We chose gravel for our current drive, big chunky 20mm sized but then we have 4×4’s so getting off would never be an issue. To be fair we’ve not had any serious issues with visitors 2wd cars despite it being sloping but I suspect the smaller sizes of your chippings may have been the problem. I think our 20mm sized gravel gives more ‘bite’.

Thank you. The herringbone pattern was a lot of work, and yes, we did have clouds of dust when they were cutting the bricks 😳 Our old chippings were 20mm, no problem for Dougal, in fact I drove backwards and forwards over them to try and flatten them. T’s Yaris didn’t get stuck either, but the motorhome just wouldn’t budge. We thought perhaps 3×2 slabs dug into the chippings for the front wheels may help, but they just got flicked away.

Yes, busy busy week.
The greenhouse arrived and we were assembling it in the back garden, while the drive was being done at the front.
Post to follow 🙂
Luckily we picked the week summer arrived and finished before it ended 😉

You are not wrong about summer! Last week I couldn’t sleep at night for the heat and then yesterday I awoke to go to work at 4am to find the truck with thick ice on the windscreen and just 3c showing on the thermometer. I got to work to find that some colleagues had actualy seen snow flakes while driving to work – don’t you just love the British summer 😉

Hope all goes well with the greenhouse. Looking forward to the pictures of it full of plants later in the year.